As I have not seen a beach in a while, I was pretty excited to be heading on into Caracas and then subsequently on to Los Roques. I think Los Roques is like the Fernando de Noronha of Brazil and the Galapagos of Ecuador; an expensive place more for holiday makers rather than your general budget backpackers.

So I arrived in Caracas early and checked into Floresta hotel for one night in the relatively safe district of Altamira. Caracas being the Capital of Venezuela, it's a huge city - so I paid for a city guide to drive me around and show me all the sights in the one day that I had. In all honesty it was good to spend the day in the city and enjoy the sights of Simon Bolivar plaza and the history around where he lived but the main event "Los Roques" and what I was really looking forward to.

The next day I flew to Los Roques hoping that this place will live up to expectations. I already realise that this isn't going to be a place full of party hungry backpackers but I accept that, this trip is about finding paradise; about finding my own 'Beach' comparable to Leonardo's adventures in Thailand! As I flew over the Los Roques archipelago islands it was stunning, small islands most uninhabited were surrounded by light blue and green Caribbean sea - I was in amazement with a huge smile on my face knowing that soon I'll be touching down on one of these fine arse islands.

I touched down on 'Grand Roque' which is the habited island, although still small and charming. The island only had around 4 sand roads and no cars whatsoever...well there isn't a need for them here as it is so small. After a short time wondering the island, I found a cheap guesthouse to stay in for the two nights I have here, it was called JuanFel, small and family run. I then set off to explore the island, it was tiny but still had a baseball pitch and there was a local game going on which I watched for a while before heading to the bars for sunset. I found this small bar where I sat outside with a caprioska and watched the pelicans dive for fish whilst the sun was setting; what a great start to the trip.

Grand Roque is just a place to sleep, eat and drink...a normal day consists of the whole tourist population descending on the pier between 08:30-09:30 and getting on a boat to one or many of the islands - which is what I did on the 2nd day. I took a boat with about ten other people on a tour to a few of the islands. They all had their own individual characteristics but with two things in common; white sand and crystal clear water. Los Roques is also famous for their lobster fishing, so here they can catch a fresh lobster for your lunch and is dirt cheap compared to back home, so I told the fisherman to catch me a 1kg lobster and off he went fishing; at 3pm that day my lunch was served. The beaches here are out of this world, if you wanted to find a secluded beach or even island then here is the place. Not much goes on though in the evenings but I found this small bar on the beach that was projecting a film onto a white bed sheet hung between two palm trees - so I spent the evening here watching TV with local beer as my company!

My third and final day was a short one as my flight was booked for 5pm but at least this gave me the chance to visit another island where I haven't been yet; so I got the map out and picked an island that was close to Grand Roque to visit for the afternoon. I decided to do a bit of exploring on the island before picking where to lay my towel. The main beach was a long stretch of white sand with the odd palm tree lining it, looking out to the sea were hundreds of pelicans and other birds diving into the sea feeding on the small fish in the shallows. The beach then took a 90 degrees left turn to where the fly fishermen would fish. You could then walk across the shallow sea to another island which was a fisherman island, boats and fisherman baiting up traps and counting lobsters was the sight of this island. I then found a small restaurant serving fresh lobster; oh go on then why not - one lobster please! I then headed back from lunch and found a secluded spot and just relaxed for the rest of the day, watching the pelicans before heading back to Grand Roque to catch my flight back to Caracas where I would stay for one night near the airport as I have pre-booked my flight from Caracas Venezuela to Cartagena Columbia at 6am the next day.